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Rating: "Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia", the most violent of their career and in many ways considered as one of the best black metal albums. It's a symphonic brutal black that would frighten even the most violent Cannibal Corpse, with Barker going insane on the drums, this group is truly destructive. Additionally, the cover features a damsel, unfortunately sawed off limbs, arms, and head, completely nude on a pentagram. It's all to my liking because Dimmu Borgir is one of my favorite black bands, not only because they are the only decent ones in Symphonic Black but also due to the beautiful rhythm section by Barker, who has significantly improved since leaving Cradle Of Filth.
The album opens with Fear And Wonder, which is a classical music intro. Blessings Upon The Throne Of Tyranny, is a truly destructive death black attack, with beautiful melodies, giving black metal a new sense of true beauty; then the drumming is really terrifying, clearly showing Barker's improvement since leaving Cradle Of Filth, there's a beautiful double bass drum, plus those deep voices that were so loved by Megadeth during the 'Rust In Peace' era (talking about another thing here…). Kings Of The Carnival Creation, is one of Dimmu Borgir's most famous songs, the melodies are not lacking, effectively making black much more aggressive, then Shagrath always gives his best with fantastic growls and screams, never missing the keyboards. Gorgeous guitar solos are also present. Hybrid Stigmata - The Apostasy is a song that at first can be deceiving, because it's very groove and not very melodic, even if the orchestra is always present, the keyboardist in this song showcases great technical skills. This is precisely the secret of Dimmu Borgir, the dark and melodic, orchestral, and very theatrical atmospheres. Architecture Of A Genocidal Nature is very thrash in the Destruction style, enriched with a beautiful rhythmic base, equipped with stunning keyboards, and a terrifying bass that is very hard to find in Dimmu Borgir, another reason why this album is the most powerful in their career, the keyboards are beautiful, yet they are broken by a very destructive and fast Thrash Black.
Indocrination is Dimmu Borgir's most brutal song, indeed you can also hear that magnificent grindcore nuance (I'm ready for criticism…), which they love so much, the guitars are heavier than ever, the drums perform beautiful solos. The very symphonic keyboards do solos with the guitars that are somewhat amusing. Then they return to the destruction from where they started. The Maelstrom Mephisto, there's always that brutal death element akin to Nile, which does not leave you indifferent during listening. Then there are the lyrical parts, beautifully theatrical yet also vulgar and satanic. The guitars have never been so aggressive in Dimmu Borgir, the basses have never been so present. Sympozium, begins with keyboards that in turn mix with magnificent guitar parts, which later become a bit more in the Swedish Death Metal style, in the tradition of Entombed, Dismember, and Dissection. The lyrics in this song are very present and accompanied by a Gothic Rock base, returning to the Swedish death metal from which they originated.
The album concludes with Perfection Or Vanity, an instrumental melodic outro with Gothic/Doom/Dark bases enriched with beautiful keyboards.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
02 Blessings Upon the Throne of Tyranny (05:19)
Infected by invalid behaviour
While capturing the stench of divine purefaction
Confess to slavery for the world saviour
Give praise and inhale the corruption
(chorus:)
The Enfeebled provides the fool
The Disabled provides the tool
The Apathtic demands the affection
To those suffering from their own satisfaction
Devour in self-deceit, conjure the righteous plage,
testify today's contradiction, glorify tomorrows deed
Inconceivable immoral priest, hide in preferable dress,
invite to another pleasure feast, the concealment of joyful laughter
The decrepit innocence of your correctness and well-chosen
Elicitss the source of the need for immediate forgiveness
Submits to no grace but the spiteful of your disease
Apply to join the unlimited grace and a settlement in the skies
And turn the confusion among your children into self-stimulation
The incarnation of your prostitution, the true Evil in disguise
With the ignorance from your cross as the witness,
the truth of your tragedy make you justice
In your mirror the high spirits of kindness looks like malice
Condemnation of life by the living dead, what a premature judgement,
contradiction to the core
How unfortunate I am, cursed to spend time on a battle already won
The shame that will be guarding your grave says it all,
retreat to the crypt and make it worthwhile
Recall my sins furthermore but still be watching yours with a smile.
03 Kings of the Carnival Creation (07:48)
Incarnated marvels simplefied, effects from such a disconsalate kind
Impotence of the once so perfect living, erase and rewind
Stand rigid for the next battle, peace means reloading your guns
The love for life is all hatred in disguise, a carnival creation with masks undone
In search for the guideliness to the gateways of sin
Through mires of misanthropy with wrath in mind
Sophistication as cruelty and perfection as virulent truth
Confidently dawned, to pick the best of enemies
An abyss womb strech wide open, exposed to retaliate
(chorus:)
With the stigma feasting on your flesh as I wish you well, thorns from the fountains of faith licking lepered skin
Worshipped by anyone's mass on your planet hell, what on earth possessed you
Consuming illusions made from hysteria and swallowed tongues
Devoured by doubt, conducting arts of misconception
Testimonial suffiency declaring numbess of all perceptions
Glance into the blackness hidden beneath your surface
And enjoy the suffering, sanity drained in disrespect
With such bedevilled faith in good, subsequently trusting evil
Next step for mankind will be the last seasons in sin
Left are the kings of the carnival creation, carrying out of the echoes of the fallen
Sense the withering eternity as it fades away, the ultimate graceskess voyage of all times
Only death will be guarding your angels, silently
Cripples joining arms in clamour, institionalized for the rebirth, the herd will be hunted
05 Architecture of a Genocidal Nature (06:09)
A dismal universal hiss, the sound of public scorn
The brush that sweeps across the spectral fields
This landscape is not without a sense of epic wonder
A vast scale that places this sprawling underworld
Into a realm of frames
With a blood-storm fading into the distance
Floating without directions over this smouldering landscape
Caught in a moment of transformation
These shades of anatomic malignant nature
Approached on another in an unpleasant way
Frozen in the act of speech, desperate to express it's state
Created in a shape to accommodate a wide variety of demonic forms
The realm of the benighted aristocracy of evil most pure
This is where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep
Emerged from the depths of the earth gasps
It rages against mankind, to annihilate the earth and worse
It spills the blood like rain, the beauty of death it represents
Devouring their flesh with a razorblade smile
Genes would still blindly carry on smouldering ember of hell
Limned with gold leaf, the scarlet brush
That sweep all traces of time, place and pattern
Total death in every nation
Monuments of vanquished civilization
Just as brilliantly removed ruthlessly eliminated
The cornerstone of human emotions
Has now been drained away
I saw death of a most uncommon nature
[music: Silenoz and Shagrath]
[lyrics: Shagrath]
06 Puritania (03:06)
We do away with your kind
Count down to exterminate the human race
4,3,2,1
Let chaos entwine
On defenseless soil
Remove errors of man
And sweep all the weakening kind
I am war, I am pain
I am all you've ever slain
I am tears in your eyes
I am grief, I am lies
Bygone are intolerance
And presence of grace
Scavengers are sent out
To cleanse the human filth parades
I am pure, I am true
I am all over you
I am laugh, I am smile
I am the earth defiled
I am the cosmic storm
I am the tiny worms
I am fear in the night
I am bringer of light
Earth...successfully...erased...
07 IndoctriNation (05:57)
Oh, look at those lifeless leaves
All their precious pride is taken away
A lost creation for a graven image
Trembling of nothing but their own fear
[chorus:]
On behalf of water made to wine
Elements of deception must entwine
Righteous greed and derangement divine
Vacuum is given to the blind
To surrender to a faith so fake
To not comprehend while you're awake
Thrive on your deity for heaven's sake
Do loose your battle before actual birth
For some sheep need the company of a shepherd
To face the scorn of the earth
Existential parasite drama across the lands
What a relief never bother the why's
Investing illusions and folding hands
The passion for mankind's ignorance feeding you lies
All those naked faces, empty shells
Procreation of the mind put to rest
Crippled and caged, anaesthesia adjust
The lambs of slaughter preoccupied in disgust
08 The Maelstrom Mephisto (04:42)
Ride the vortex winds with the beast inside
Cast down all memories from a past and future world
The cynic icons and the cryptic writings
As a picturesque creation in force and spirit
Against their reason and will, it is time
Give darkness it's passion plea
The venomous tongue
The inevitable poison
Paralyze the angels
Freeze the forgiven
Baptize in fire
Unleash the devil at heart
Unleash the maelstrom mephisto
[chorus:]
So sinner, mourn well
Make all the swans suffer in hell
The maelstrom of the mephisto left the trace
To revel and feast in undelivered grace
Pledged to judgmental arrogance in
Drawn principles of ignorant falsehood
To comprehend that the sin of life is life itself
A tyranny in torment, an inner-sanctum stealing sleep
In the dimness surrounding the towers of the castle
Where the ravens spread their wings out wide
Dwell in depths of the darker self at any shore of infinity
And watch the relentless paint the soil black
What is being formed echoes throughout eternity
As the painter chooses color no more
Hold your shadows close when the comedy is over
As the days of mourning seem to be the days of joy
Fragments fell from the sky in order to penetrate the eyes
A convict wallowing in a lifetime of lies:lies
09 Absolute Sole Right (06:26)
As cyclones detach from the world above
And all the other worlds beneath them flow
Timewinds caressing the dust of cold memories
Sought, to strive in twilight mist and penal fire
[chorus:]
As daylight suffers, night time recollects
For what wind hath drawn near, so near:
Death has a contract on life and hell in-between
What was once not certain is now foreseen
When the pendulum is in it's reverse factor
Rivers run red and skies turn black
Accuracies of bloodbaths liberate from within
Conquests of a crooked cross and its coming loss
A magisterial maintenance of diabolic education
Where the opposite of innocence paves way for intelligence
Where pearls are chained for each tragic event
The glorification of deviance in progress
Liars in wait tries to quench their thirst for more
Drowning victims of a parallel universe
The scum of the earth, a rejoice of fouls
The world hates you for being precise
[music: Silenoz and Shagrath]
[lyrics: Silenoz]
10 Sympozium (05:14)
Chains of despair cloacked by darkness
The thundering echoes of great destruction to come
Mankind's mysteries,the dying world
[chorus:]
Madness in it's sweetest form, what shrivels and dies must face the tempest
The angelic heaven bows to the ultimate truth and melancholy grew
Anticipation mender through madness,condemned to the same horrid fate
Insanity applauds,how sharp the awakening
Pale as disease...mocking...maddening...
Give up the ghost,cease the gloomy awakening
12 Burn in Hell (05:06)
Welcome to the abandoned land
Come on in, child; Take my hand
Here there's no work or play
Only one bill to pay
There's just five words to say
As you go down, down, down
You're gonna Burn in Hell
Oh, Burn in Hell
You can't believe all the things I've done wrong in my life
Without even trying I've lived on the Edge of a Knife
Well, I've played with fire, but I don't want to get myself burned
To thyn known self be true, so I think that it's time for a change
Before I Burn in Hell
Oh, Burn in Hell
Take a good look in your heart; Tell me what do you see ?
It's black and it's dark, now is that how you want it to be ?
It's up to you; What you do will decide your own fate
Make your choice now for tomorrow may be far too late
Hear no Evil, don't you
See no Evil, don't you
Lay no Evil down on me
Speak no Evil, don't you
Think no Evil don't you
Play with Evil, 'cause I'm free.
And then you'll Burn in Hell
[REPEAT CHORUS/FADE]
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Other reviews
By BathoryAria
The orchestra is indeed the ace up the sleeve of this full-length, and it can be admired in all its majesty especially in the suggestive and emotional intro 'Fear and Wonder.'
Dimmu Borgir thus delivers another absolutely new and personal work, which will certainly influence the upcoming releases of the Norwegian combo.
